Translation Of The Metaphors In The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

The Unbearable Lightness of Being,the most well-known book of the famous French writer Milan Kundera,has achieved a huge success throughout the world.The novel was first translated into Chinese by the writer Han Shaogong and his sister Han Gang in 1987,which has gained great attention from the public since its publication.Professor Xu Jun from Nanjing University retranslated this novel according to the French version and the new version was released by Shanghai Translation Publishing House in 2003,which offered readers a new possibility of translation and set off a burst of mania for Milan Kundera among Chinese readers.The translation of The Unbearable Lightness of Being contributes enormously to the transmission and reception of Kundera's works in China.Metaphor is one major feature in the writing of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.Literary metaphor,as a translation difficulty,is a big challenge for translators.As Eoyang mentionned in The Transparent Eye,translation can be regarded as the metaphor of the original work in another language.Translation and metaphor have a fundamental similarity.Literary metaphor has been reserched as a writing skill for a long time.Lakoff and Johson provided systematic linguistic evidence to support the claim that significant parts of human cognition are predisposed to think in metaphotical terms.Their theory give us a new way to look into literary metaphors.Conceptual metaphor theory can be applied to the practice of metaphor translation,requiring translators to pay more attention to mechanism of metaphotical concepts in order to find the best translation solutions on both linguistic and cognitive level.Our study tries to analyze under the perspective of the conceptual metaphor theory the metaphorical examples in The Unbearable Lightness of Being,for the purpose of revealing translator's strategies behind his choices.This study is divided into three chapters.The first chapter sheds light upon conceptual metaphor theory.We discuss in detail the systematicness of metaphorical concepts,the cultural coherence and the presentation of novel metaphors.At the end of this chapter,we try to explain the adaptability of conceptual metaphor theory in the practice of metaphor translation.The second chapter aims to point out some conceptual metaphors and look into the establishment,extent and unity of their networks in the creation of The Unbearable Lightness of Being.With textual analysis on the theme and the allegorical characters of the novel,we find that Kundera creates a fictitious reality on the basis of novel metaphors and the literal translation of Xu Jun ensures the coherence of metaphorical conceptualization.In the last part,we try to recapitulate the translator's tactics in the translation of metaphors by analyzing exemplary metaphors from The Unbearable Lightness of Being.By way of conclusion,what we hope,through this research,is on the one hand,to point out the importance of conceptual metaphor in the process of literary metaphor translation,and to reveals from the perspective of conceptual metaphor that translator's strategy literal translation from the perspective of conceptual metaphor ensures the continuity of metaphor in the translation.On the other hand,this study aims to enrich the study of Kundera and to promote the spread and acceptance of Kundera's works in China.